Deadline for Lenny Stern: A Michael Russo Mystery

by Peter Marabell

  “I want to catch Tina and AJ,” I said. “Stay here ‘til we get back, Lenny. Okay?”

  “No argument from me.”

  We found Tina alone out front of the building. She sat on the steps in the sun, her knees pulled up, tissues clutched in her hand. Henri and I sat down with her.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi,” Tina said. “AJ went home to get dressed for work.”

  “Feel like talking?”

  “I’ve been talking since the cops woke me up this morning.”

  “I know. Just a few more minutes.”

  “Sure.” She sounded too tired to argue.

  “You and Kate walked off last night …”

  Tina nodded. “City Park Grill.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  “There’s not much to tell,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “We sat down, drank some wine … Kate only had one glass, she had to drive to her sister’s …”

  Tina froze for a moment. “Oh, my god. Her sister. I should tell her.”

  “The police will do that, Tina,” I said.

  “But I …”

  “The police have done this before, Tina. It’ll be all right.”

  She stared across the street, like she’d spotted something interesting.

  “They won’t forget?”

  “They won’t forget. It’s part of their job.”

  “Lousy job.”

  “Some days, yeah,” I said.

  “I guess that’ll be okay.”

  “Do you know Kate’s sister?”

  “We only met once, but I still think …”

  “You can call her later if you want.”

  Two uniformed officers left the building, walked to a patrol SUV and drove off. The three of us watched them intently, as if witnessing something quite important.

  “Tina,” Henri said, “did anything odd or strange happen at the restaurant?”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything. Anyone hit on you? Did you pick up anyone?”

  Tina sat up straight. “I’m not sure that’s …”

  “Tina,” I said. “We’re not prying into your personal life, but we need to know about last night. That’s why Henri asked. Somebody knew you and Kate were there.”

  She turned my way. “You think we were followed?”

  “It wasn’t a coincidence, Tina.”

  “But why Kate?” she demanded, the tears coming again. “Why not me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Tina.” It was Henri. “Did you talk to anyone while you were there?”

  She was quiet for a moment.

  “There was one guy, kind of cute.”

  “Tell us.”

  Tina described the man — older, business dress, expensive haircut. Obviously not one of the tough-guy teenagers who tried to scare us in the parking lot.

  “I had another glass of wine,” she said. “I could walk.”

  “To the Perry?” Henri said.

  Tina nodded. “I walked Kate to her car, it was across the street from the bar.”

  “Did you see her drive away?”

  “The police asked me that, too … I didn’t look back. Don’t know why. I just … went to my hotel and climbed into bed.”

  “Until the police woke you up this morning?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  We talked a while longer, took from Kate what we thought might help, which wasn’t much.

  “Henri’s going to keep an eye on you,” I said. “The hotel isn’t the best place anymore.”

  “You haven’t talked to AJ, have you?”

  I shook my head. “No, why?”

  “I’m staying with her as long as the book tour’s in town.”

  “You are?”

  She nodded. “We talked about it this morning. She said it would be okay with you.”

  “It’s a great idea.”

  “I’ll ride back and forth to the office with her.”

  “I’ll take it from there,” Henri said. “You’re with Lenny and me most of the time anyway.”

  Tina gently rubbed her eyes.

  “Is there anything else?” she said. “I need to talk with Charles before he leaves for Chicago.”

  “Not right now. Thanks,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said, and went back inside.

  Henri and I sat for a few minutes. The sun was almost too warm. We’d have to retreat into air conditioning sooner rather than later.

  AJ’s Explorer pulled up to the curb across the street. She got out and walked over.

  “Have you seen Tina?”

  “Inside. She’ll be safer staying with you. Good idea.”

  “I thought so, too,” AJ said in a matter-of-fact way, and entered the building.

  “Okay,” Henri said. “We’ve talked with Tina. Let’s see what Lenny has to say.”

  We found him right where we left him, sitting in Maury’s office.

  “Maury had a meeting,” Lenny said. “He said we could use his office.”

  Henri and I took seats at the table.

  “I suppose you want my take on last night?”

  I nodded. “Go ahead.”

  He shrugged. “I have no take on last night. Henri made sure I got home after we left Chandler’s.”

  Henri nodded as Lenny talked.

  “I locked the door, and that was that.”

  “Nothing?” I said. “No calls, nothing?”

  He shook his head. “Until Henri called early, said he was on his way over. Told me to stay inside, away from the windows.”

  “I checked the yard when I got there,” Henri said. “All clear. We drove two cars over here.”

  “I’ve been in the building all morning.”

  Lenny sat back in the chair and tugged on his right earlobe. “She was just a kid,” he said, glancing at Henri first, then me. “She was smart, I knew that first time we met. She knew how to handle the book, you know, the edits, the changes, all of it. She was just a kid. Why kill her?”

  “Thought you might have an idea about that,” I said, but Lenny seemed lost in the violence of the night.

  “I know why they’re pissed at me … I nailed their asses, got the evidence to back it up. Why Kate? I wrote the goddamn book.”

  Lenny took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Look, I’m on deadline. I’ll be at my desk.” He glanced at each of us. “Okay?”

  “Sure,” I said as Lenny eased himself out of the chair and left the room.

  Henri and I sat quietly for a moment.

  “What’s next?” Henri said.

  “Joey DeMio’s next. Like Fleener said, we should start with the man himself.”

  “Fleener might not like it if you talk to him first.”

  “We ask different questions.”

  “Which means you don’t care if Fleener likes it or not.”

  I shrugged.

  “I’m not sure anymore,” Henri said.

  “If DeMio’s behind this?”

  “Yeah, but it’s time we found out.”

  17

  “You think it’s smart to go over there alone?” Henri said. He sat on the couch in my apartment, feet on the coffee table, hands clasped behind his head. I’d taken a shower, dressed in khakis, a short-sleeved shirt and beat-up Brooks running shoes.

  “I’ll go in easy,” I said, taking a bite out of a large, red McIntosh apple. “Just to talk. See what Joey has to say.”

  “Okay, but Joey’s not going to just say, ‘Yeah, I killed Stern’s editor.’”

  “He won’t have to. His reaction will tell me all I need to know.”

  “It’s not his reaction I’m worried about,” Henri said. “His gunmen, on the other hand …”
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br />   I shook my head. “I’m not going to threaten the man, Henri. Said I’d go in easy. Ristorante Enzo’s a public place, lots of people around.”

  I finished off the last of the apple. “First, I need to find out when Joey’ll be there.”

  “He’s at Enzo now,” Henri said. “Table in the back corner of the room.”

  “Sure about that?”

  Henri nodded. “Made a couple of calls while you were in the shower.”

  “Of course you did. He alone?”

  Henri shook his head. “Not alone, but neither Rosato nor Cicci are there.”

  “He’s without his favorite gunmen?”

  “Hard to believe, isn’t it,” Henri said, looking disappointed. He’d been needling those two for years, and seldom passed up an opportunity.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “Joey doesn’t move without cover. You don’t suppose he’s trying to go legit with this move to Petoskey?”

  Henri laughed. “Joey’s probably washing dirty money along with the dirty dishes.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “You’ll carry your .38?”

  “No. Probably be searched. Better to do this clean.”

  “Don’t know about you, Russo.”

  Henri paused. “When you going?”

  “Don’t see any point waiting. Sooner we rule Joey in, the better.”

  “Unless we rule him out,” Henri said, dropping his feet to the floor. “Tell you what, give me ten minutes to put my car across the street.”

  I shook my head. “No need for that.”

  “Maybe not, but it’s too late for a lunch crowd. The place could be empty.”

  “Except for Joey’s people, you mean.”

  “Exactly,” Henri said. “I’ll sit in the car, watch you go in, hope you come out.”

  “That’s encouraging.”

  “How ‘bout I come to the rescue when the shooting starts?”

  “I’d appreciate that,” I said. “Well, get a move on.”

  Without a word, Henri was off the couch and out the door. I followed him a few moments later. He’d have his car in place at the restaurant by the time I arrived on foot. Such is street congestion in the Gaslight District in July.

  I walked two blocks to Bay Street. Cars and trucks inched their way through the narrow streets. The sidewalks were full of people who’d collected in town for a steamy day of shopping. I turned on Lake Street and spotted Henri’s SUV parked near a fire hydrant, almost across from the restaurant.

  The driver’s window slid down, and he looked over at me with no sign of recognition. The window went back up.

  The restaurant occupied a narrow space in the middle of the block. The front door sat between two large windows. Heavy maroon curtains held up by thick brass rods covered the lower half of each window.

  Above the door hung a simple sign, red letters over black: ENZO.

  I went inside and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dimly lit interior.

  The room was a narrow rectangle, front to back, with a long, heavy bar of wood and brass on the wall to the right. Small tables filled the space across from the bar, with larger tables at the back of the room. The previous iteration of an Italian eatery, Ristorante Bella, was mauve carpet and white tablecloths. Ristorante Enzo was oak floors, dim lights and red-checked tablecloths. The mellow strains of Frank Sinatra’s rendition of “Lady is a Tramp” filled the dead air usually taken up by noisy diners and hustling waiters. The feel was all 1950s New York rather than 21st century northern Michigan.

  Leaning on the bar near the door was a tall, gangly kid in jeans, a watch cap atop a thin face, baggy print vest barely concealing a large shoulder holster. Jimmy Erwin: a teenage shooter from Indiana I’d last seen being hauled off the streets of Petoskey in handcuffs.

  “Jimmy,” a voice said from the back of the room.

  Erwin stepped away from the bar and moved in front of me. He put his hands on his hips and nodded.

  I spread my arms out to each side and he frisked me, moving from arms to torso to legs.

  “He’s clean,” Erwin said, loud enough to be heard in the back of the room.

  A few feet down the bar stood Roberta Lampone (AKA Bobbie Fairhaven), tall and angular, her black hair pulled into a ponytail. Her face said sorority girl, her body said Army Rangers, Afghanistan and Iraq. Her father, and before him her grandfather, ran the Lampone crime family, a frequent Windy City competitor of the DeMio family.

  I nodded as I went by her toward the back of the room. A beam of light spread out on the floor, cast beneath saloon-like swinging doors fronting the kitchen. The staff was busy cleaning up after lunch and prepping for dinner. Muffled conversations blended with banging pots, whirring mixers and noisy fans.

  At a four-top in the right rear corner sat Joey DeMio and Donald Harper.

  DeMio took over the Baldini crime family after his father, Carmine, retired to spend more time on the front porch of his East Bluff cottage on Mackinac Island. Joey’s typical outfit — dark slacks, silk t-shirt and gray V-neck — always seemed more suited for someone hosting a cocktail party, rather than running drugs or prostitution rings. His salt-and-pepper hair was brushed back, like his father’s; his face featured close-set oval eyes, framed in an olive complexion. Joey didn’t react as I approached the table.

  Not so for Harper, the family’s Ivy League lawyer. He stiffened as I came up. I couldn’t read his face. Was it derision or irritation? Did it matter? He looked every bit the part of an attorney featured in Vanity Fair. Expensive suit; sharp movie star features, rimmed glasses. The works.

  “Joey … Don.”

  “Counselor,” Joey said. “Sit.”

  I pulled out a chair, aware that the two empty chairs put my back to the room, to Lampone and Erwin.

  “Nice place.”

  “First visit?”

  “Yeah, I don’t get out much. It’s got a good feel, Joey, a city feel.”

  I thought I detected a small smile.

  “Surprised you opened a restaurant here,” I said. “The island could use an honest Italian menu.”

  Joey shrugged. “Petoskey’s a good town.”

  “You looking to expand your reach to the mainland?”

  “Mr. DeMio’s vision for business expansion is not limited by geography.”

  That was Harper.

  “He’s guided by a sense of community need and opportunity.”

  “Did they teach you to talk like that at Harvard, or do you make it up as you go along?”

  “Yale, Mr. Russo. Y-A-L-E.” A vivid reminder to a Big Ten guy like me that the distance between our schools, between us, was calculated in more than just miles.

  I started to say something, but Joey interrupted.

  “What can I do for you, counselor?”

  I leaned forward, elbows on the table.

  “I’ve got a problem.”

  “And you’ve come to me.”

  I nodded.

  “Why do you think I can help?”

  “You might be the problem.”

  Harper glanced toward the front of the room, toward Erwin and Lampone. It was a subtle move, but I caught it.

  Joey caught it, too. “Easy,” he said while looking at Harper, loud enough for the others to hear.

  “I might be your problem, counselor?”

  “You heard about the murder last night?”

  Joey nodded ever so slightly.

  “The woman who was killed, Kate Hubbell. You know her?”

  He shook his head.

  Joey was holding back. He wasn’t sure where I was going with this, so he was being more cautious than usual.

  “You know Lenny Stern, the reporter?”

  A nod.

  “You know about his book?”

&nb
sp; “Why don’t you tell me?”

  I did.

  “Stern writes about a couple of floaters, you come to me? You think I dumped the bodies in Lake Michigan?”

  “The bodies were wiseguys from Chicago, Joey. Scores were settled, public officials were bribed. Lot of killing in those days. You know that.”

  “What’s that have to do with me?”

  “You were part of it, Joey. Not you exactly, but your family. Carmine ran the family then.”

  Joey flinched just a bit at the mention of his father’s name.

  “Stern used to write about us. When I was growing up. They’d drink Anisette, Stern and my father, and talk. Then Stern would go and write it all down.”

  Lenny knew the Chicago crime families in those days — DeMio, Lampone, Fanucci — and wrote about them, but I never suspected he was on drinking terms with Carmine DeMio. Damn sure I’m going to ask him about that.

  “Stern wrote about the Lampones, too,” he said, gesturing in the direction of Roberta Lampone, still standing at the bar with Jimmy Erwin. “And about old man Genco and the Fanucci family.”

  “Are you seriously suggesting Mr. DeMio is responsible for this woman’s death?” Harper said. “Because she’s connected to Stern’s book?”

  I ignored Harper, who seemed more agitated than Joey about this discussion.

  “Joey, you’re the only guy I know travels with gunslingers. You’re the only guy I know wrapped up in the business of the Chicago families who knew the politicians Lenny wrote about.”

  Silence.

  I turned and looked toward the front of the restaurant.

  “Where are Rosato and Cicci? You never go anywhere without your gunmen.”

  “Our employees are of no concern to you, Mr. Russo,” Harper said.

  He was easy to ignore, so I did, again.

  “You hiring younger gunslingers these days, Joey?”

  He offered a response somewhere between a grin and a smirk.

  “My father feels more comfortable with familiar people. They can’t be two places at once, so we brought in some new people.”

  Maybe Joey had given me an opening …

  “Next thing you know you’ll be hiring teenage boys to do your dirty work.”

  “Do I look that stupid?” Joey said.

  “When you gonna send a couple of kids to gun down Lenny Stern?”